Previews

SimCity 4: Rush Hour

There are games that are fun, and there are games that hit you right where you live. In the case of the SimCity franchise, I mean that literally. After all, one of the appeals of the series is the opportunity to create the city of your dreams. Don't like the Los Angeles skyline? Zone the area light commercial and watch the buildings shrink. Think you can manage New York City better than Mayor Bloomberg? Here's your chance to prove it.

That's why when Kevin Hogan, producer of the new expansion pack for SimCity 4: Rush Hour showed me an early build of the game, it got right to me. Rush Hour is all about expanding a SimMayor's control over their city's transportation grid. As someone who faces the nightmare of L.A. traffic every day, that got my attention immediately. "We've always tried to be responsive to the suggestions of our fans." Hogan said, "So when we went over the feedback on Sim City 4, at least 90% of the e-mails we got asked us for some improvement in the traffic system."

Some of those improvements take the forms of new build options for a player's cities. Cities can now sport much wider avenues, narrow alleys and even one-way streets. The freeway system will have a much wider array of on and off-ramp structures including a cloverleaf formation. Be careful how you set up your road network though, new graphic events include massive train wrecks.

Mass transit isn't neglected either, as players will be able to build elaborate ferry systems that include lighthouses and elevated railways with railyards that can do wonders alleviating traffic in crowded downtowns. The most impressive options, though, at least from a graphics point of view, is a whole bunch of new bridge styles. Only one, the Golden Gate Bridge, is specifically named in the game. Other bridge styles, though, include a beautiful cable and brick suspension bridge clearly based on the Brooklyn Bridge, and a metal-arched bridge similar to the one that crosses Sydney Harbor.

Longtime SimCity fans have always said that one of the key pleasures of the game isn't just getting a city to run well, but also looking good. As such, many additions in Rush Hour have been put in purely for their aesthetic value. For instance, one element that SimCity 2000 players loved that was missing in SimCity 4 were the large signposts that could be placed anywhere in the city to designate neighborhoods or points of interest. They're back now, along with a new system that can place a flat block of text directly on the ground. This will allow players to actually name streets, mountains, or bodies of water with labels that will dynamically expand or contract to give a more "map-like" feel to the game.

There's a backup on the 405 all the way to Century Boulevard...

Rush Hour has a beautiful new building set called Modern European that players can use to enhance their city's look. The game now has enhanced "evolution controls" too. Using these controls, players can now designate up to four "eras" in their town's development and determine just how long a city will use a particular building style before moving on to the next. Also returning with this expansion is the option to designate buildings of regions historical landmarks. This means that cities can now preserve particularly attractive enclaves against new styles of architecture, so it's now possible to create that Lower East Side or Chinatown style tourist area.

The biggest change, though, according to Hogan, comes from "the most asked for feature in any SimCity" -- the ability to get down to the individual sim level and control vehicles. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that players will be able to drive through their city in 3D (my most requested SimCity feature). Instead, it means that clicking on a particular vehicle will bring up a simplified control panel that will allow the SimMayor to set the direction, speed, and driving route of almost every vehicle in the game.